FEET!!: Kremlin Section of the Menominee + the Red - (nearly) Last Call for Whitewater

This past weekend, Hoofers had their whitewater version of the Fall Colors paddling trip. Though the water was low, we did get some beautiful weather and peak colors. Friday night, we got out of Madison in a super-timely manner, and most of the group was up in Hooferland before 11pm! (Hooferland is a small strip of land that the outing club owns up in northern Wisconsin - complete with tent sites, a fire ring, a privy, and plenty of nearby rivers.) We had a pretty nice fire going by the time everybody found their way up, and everybody stayed up well into the evening.

Morning in Hooferland

Quiver Falls aka The Kremlin Section on the Menominee River

Right of the Island

Saturday morning, we crawled out of the tents, grabbed oatmeal/bagels/fruit and coffee for breakfast, packed PB&Js for lunch, and headed east toward the U.P. It took us a while to figure out the right way to the put-in, but eventually we made it to the Menominee River. The Menominee straddles the border between Wisconsin and Michigan, and there are several park and play spots where you can do laps on a short bit of a rapid.

This section was contained by DNR land, and there were some nice dirt roads giving us access to the river. The stretch itself probably wasn't much over a quarter mile, but there were two different channels that were split by a large island. Since there were some newbies, we scouted everything, and ran in a pretty organized/pretty downstream manner. We only managed to get 3 runs in with the confused directions and the scouting, but there were some baby surfs to be had.

The first two laps, we stayed on the right side of the island. There were some boulder gardens and wave trains, but nothing all that tough and nothing great for play (except for maybe the middle of the run). All the experienced paddlers had 2-3 less experienced folks to lead, so there was little in the way of working or playing the river.

Scouting the Rapid

The third lap (in the left channel) was much more fun. There was one straightforward drop and curve with a bigger play wave and a cool span of a cascade off to the side of the runnable water. We stopped after the first drop for a bit, but several of the less-experienced boaters got into the wave and ended up swimming.

Just down from the wave, the river split around some smaller islands, forming two distinct channels. The one on the right was pretty narrow, twisty, and an otherwise straight shot. The one on river left was wider, and though it offered more options, it also offered a lot of rocks. I went left, and though I didn't hit the line I was hoping for, it was a pretty fun rapid. I definitely would not have minded running the left side of the river a couple more times.

Though we knew we ought to take out shortly and get back to camp before dusk, we stayed at the bottom of the left channel for a while. A few more people had swims, and I got to work on boat-over-boat rescues (which I've been wanting to practice for a while).

All in all, this section was pretty awesome. I'd certainly like to go back if the opportunity ever presents itself again.

Not a bad walk for doing laps on the river

Emptying some spare water after the second lap

Island that separated the two channels

Surf Wave on the left side

Red River

Drying out at the Put-in

On day two, we headed about an hour south to the Sunday standby, the Red River. Though everybody had their wet gear on lines over night, we all took the shuttle to get our gear a little bit drier and a little bit warmer. There was one family of locals, and I'm sure we looked pretty amusing laying everything out.

The first couple rapids on the Red aren't anything crazy, but there was something about the river level that made Single Drop a little bit trickier than usual. The hole at the bottom kept turning people sideways and then pulling them back in. Some people flipped, but there's a nice pool for rescues at the bottom.

Second Drop had some good baby surfs, and a fair number of people tried the holes out. My level of surfing was one more rapid down, at Double Drop. The bottom hydraulic of that rapid is pretty forgiving, and an excellent place to get comfortable in a wave.

Surfing Double Drop

We were hoping to have some time at Monastery for lunch, but since it's the biggest rapid on the river, we took a lot of time to scout, set safety, and run people through one at a time. I got the cleanest run I think I've ever made, and I got some rope practice too (caught one person and kept them from going over the bottom drop - woo!).

Monastery (Low Water)

By the time we left Monastery, I was getting awfully hungry, and it was getting awfully close to 4:00. There are two rapids below the Monastery, one is kinda curvy and tricky for beginners (Ziemer's), but the other one isn't too rough.

Bottom Drop at Monastery

As soon as we got out to scout Ziemer's, I grabbed my sandwich from Ali's kayak and scarfed it down. I might have been the demo boat if I hadn't been so busy eating, but I ended up in a safety eddy instead (which was pretty cool). Though we had to run the rapid one by one, everyone had a pretty clean run, and we were on our way again in no time.

View from my safety eddy (Ziemer's)

After Ziemer's, there was a fair amount of flat water, one little shoot, and then we were at the takeout (maintained thanks to a Chicago paddling club). We got some food nearby (in Shawano, WI) and were home before midnight.